Active Streams Question

Is there any specific functions that I can pass values to and get them possted on the Active Streams page? I’m new to BuddyPress and sorry if I’m asking a stupid question just bare with me.

So I have a PHP/HTML form that gets input from a users and inserts all the values to a mysql table. Also have some pages displaying the values and so on… I’m looking to add some code to the form page so when the user submits the form it also writes some values to the Active Streams page.

Can I call the update status function and insert specific text in the background?